DOG LOVE…
I go to the Dog Park twice a week, every Saturday and Sunday, as regular as the clock passing the number 12 twice a day.
I’m so regular a visitor; I have a portable Dog Park Chair, purchased just for the park and necessary to keep me from coming home with Waffle Butt tattooed to my rear for six hours afterward.
I love the Dog Park-all the fine friends-their romps, running, roving’s, and sometimes, rabid obsessions. Witness my small, red, mutt guarding his ball and issuing, throaty threats of beheading. If-you-even-think-of-trying-to-take-my-ball-I’m-going-to-open-up-a-can-of-whupass-on-you-you’ll-never-recover-from… (It’s sad really to see a 12 pound creature think he has cojones, and big ones too, when you know he left them in the medical waste pile, years and years ago.)
One young dog park friend never, ever, believes Java’s throaty growling. (Yes I had a coffee fixation when I got him from rescue, and no, I don’t have any creativity or clarity when it comes to names. Thank God I didn’t have any children…you gotta know, I would have branded them with some handle, that would have gotten stuff thrown at them all the way through post-graduate studies).
Dolly, this is our daring darling’s name, saunters into the park and goes right for Java’s balls-NOT metaphorically speaking-I’m talking the neon colored tennis ball he guards like his life depends on it. Balls everywhere for as far as the eye can see, balls growing on trees, hanging from newel posts, stuffed in pockets, being pushed up out of the ground-every ball in creation and Dolly must have-I MEAN MUST HAVE, poor dim-witted Java’s ball.
Dolly is a young, brindle striped, beautiful tank. A LARGE dog in a package that’s not 10 inches off the ground. She is a French bulldog, emphasis on the BULL. Her strength, commitment, zeal, focus, single-mindedness, genetics, and shear determination, leave Java so un-matched, it’s heartbreaking. He comes home, after protecting his domain from her, so stove up, from the arthritis that has begun to weaken his joints, that he cries and walks with his side so tucked in, he resembles the letter C sidling down the hallway, whimpering as he goes.
I have tried to protect him from Dolly’s mindless and youthful determination, and his own stubbornness…but brains are not his long suit.
Love is.
Love…pure, generous, unbounded, unfettered, copious, and available to anyone and EVERYONE who will let him lean on them, anyone who will pet him, anyone who will even gaze absentmindly in his direction. My other two dogs have Love, and give Love too…but not like Java.
Mocha, my first-born. (Yeeeessss another coffee name and lest you think me utterly bereft of any imagination at all, I did manage NOT to name the cat Espresso. Even though she is black with a hint of orange striping running underneath the black making her gorgeous and naming her Espresso, would have been a reasonable fit…but I refrained…have I made you proud?).
She, Mocha, my brown and beige beauty, gives her Love only when you have passed some mysterious and unknowable test. She takes the measure of the man or woman, sizes up their worthiness and imparts her approval with a regalness and poetic purity that is lovely, (at least to me), to behold. When she has decided…you are potentially worthy…she saunters over at a decidedly Mocha speed, sits down, gazes up, and awaits her just rewards.
Pet me please. I deserve it.
Then there is Abby, white, tiny, black eyes, and perky ears. She has great Love to share as well, and like Java she shows no particular favorites, but boy-oh-boy, you better give it to her, on her terms. Or as my dog park friend Maryn would say, “she’ll pull her scary face out, and blast you with it”. I wish I had a camera, or knew how to use one even, for that “scary face” deserves to be seen. (Please see pictures at the top of this post, provided by a dog park friend, Abby is the small white one getting smooched by the yellow lab pup. Mocha-brown and noble. Java-with his forever ball.)
I will try to recreate it for you…
Her ears extend up to their maximum height, forming an upside down heart, standing as rigid as British soldiers outside Balmoral, when the Queen’s in residence. Their interior is a soft-little-girl-pink, surrounded by standing-at attention-white hair. Her eyes are focused; the colors of coffee grounds, and are shooting lasers at the intended victim, shearing them off at the kneecaps.
Her lips pull back, and back, and back…revealing every tooth in her mouth…and if you look close, you might actually get a glimpse of her grand pappy’s teeth as well. The fangs meant to capture your attention, and strike fear into your heart, are just about the length of your pinky finger nail bed and 1/3 the width. (Really scary stuff, so far, right?)
Her limbs, such as they are, are rigid, locked and loaded. And now, issuing from that soft white throat, a growl meant to be low and thrumming, which comes out tinny and tiny. Just about this time, we, her human friends and family, are looking at her and giggling.
If she knew, she would be mortified.
She thinks her warning is severe, purposeful, loaded and magnificent…the beast in her, rising up to meet the challenge, her heritage, genetics, and highland born history on full display.
(She doesn’t know…and I would appreciate if you didn’t tell her… after all what’s a little illusion and denial among friends, am I right? I mean, you do what you must to get by…who am I to hold up a small-compact-hand-mirror and force her to see the sad, sad, truth?)
She uses this face to great and wondrous effect, just not the effect she wants, or imagines. Most people simply ignore her, pick her up, giving her a quick squeeze despite her protest that she must be loved-on her terms and her terms-only. (You must sign up, log in, have a ticket-in hand, lunch in a brown paper bag, and the necessary shots on board to get her approval…its exhausting, which is why everyone just ignores her and gets their Dog Love despite her…(and maybe even because of)… her “scary face”.
Patti, who is one half of Blue and Pixie’s persons, (two of the most beautiful Shelties you have ever seen) was commenting on Dog Love, this morning at the park. About the value, purity, loveliness, and to my mind, Transcendence of the love of a dog. A love so rich, and free from turmoil, that if you are one of those folks who report themselves to “not be dog people”…I worry that someone may have dropped you on your head, when you were just a wee one.
I know you’re out there; I’ve met a few of you. But really, truly, you need to meet my Java, my witless, red, ball loving, pool of endless giving, middle child…look him deep in his lovely dark auburn eyes and see his willingness to give you all he has-even that blasted ball…and tell me they aren’t The Great One's ambassadors.
Flipping once thru the TV stations looking for something to watch, I stumbled across an Animal Planet Police show. A young pit bull is dying, suffering from severe neglect, and starvation…the police are called and with them come the cameras…the young police officer bent down to stroke the dog’s head. The dog, whose ribs are showing, whose spine is poking out of his body like stitching on a leather jacket, reaches his neck up as far as his emaciated body would allow, licks the officer’s hand in gratitude… lays his head back down on his makeshift bed, and dies.
LOVE… it harbors no resentments, no retribution, no intolerance, and no withholds.
It gives without respect to reciprocity, recompense, remuneration or consideration. Love’s last breath-passes out and into the world-to touch, to share, to envelop.
LOVE…it’s the action name for God.
R.
2009 copyright Ronni Miller, may not use without permission of author. Photo courtesy of Ken Van Waggoner, animal photographer extraordinaire
The following is an Anonymous writers, "letter From Dog to God", I thought you might enjoy it:
TO GOD: FROM THE DOG
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